(Disappointing) AZ Pandemic in Numbers for the Week Ending March 27
Red numbers, especially in new cases and positive tests, are not what we want to see right now. Also though there is a statewide new cases decrease, it is negligible. This could be an indication of the leading edge of a new wave of infections that experts have been worried about.
This coincides with news from Friday that the South African variant has been detected in Arizona. This news comes about two weeks after ADHS reported that the Brazilian variant had been detected.
Despite this, people are out in numbers, eating in restaurants, all without masks, basically acting like the pandemic is over. With increasing infections and more contagious variants, this is a worrisome situation.
The vaccine accelerometer for this week is also disappointing:
Increases for both categories are about half what they were last week. A similar deceleration happened four weeks ago. But then there was a good excuse (a freak winter storm impacting vaccine distribution). There was no such event this week.
CNN Pandemic War Special Tonight
Tonight at 6 pm Arizona time (9 pm Eastern) CNN will air a special report featuring six of the public health officials involved in the early response to the pandemic. Here's a brief description from CNN:
CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked six of the doctors who ran point on the pandemic response, including Birx, to provide their insights on what the US could have done differently in the new documentary, "COVID WAR: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out," which airs Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on CNN. The doctors all painfully dissected the country's missteps that led to the enormous loss of life. But Birx saw it most starkly, stating that the vast majority of America's deaths could have been prevented, a painful interpretation of the last year for a nation still trying to come to terms with the ongoing loss of life.
